Surface mount packaging technology has become a pronounced trend over the past several years and has dramatically impacted modern packaging technology. In fact, this trend has become so pronounced that many board assembly operations do not have wave solder capabilities (for use in traditional hole insertion processes) at all. Instead, these modern board assembly operations have 100% of their production in the form of surface mount assembly.
The prevalence of surface mount packaging technology and the associated advantages have forced component manufacturers to redesign and reconfigure many products to make them compatible with existing surface mount package families. This has poised unique problems for component manufacturers, especially for those manufactures that manufacture products that are sensitive to temperature (i.e., clocks).